Naturally Navigating Dartmoor
The Foggiest Idea by Tom Vanderbilt. Published in Outside Magazine December 2010. I’VE LATELY COME to the realization that my whole sense of direction has been slipping…
Category: Weather
How to Cross a Park Like an Explorer
Sherlock Holmes may have felt the mist of the moor under his deerstalker on occasion, but he had a distinct preference for indoor clues over…
Friends of the Lake District Blog July 2018
Friends of the Lake District Blog by Tristan Gooley. July 2018. Over the years it has been a privilege and a pleasure to give talks…
How to Navigate with Spiders’ Webs
Animals help us navigate in lots of ways. They form both compasses and maps for us. The map is formed in a similar way to…
Equinoctial Gales
There is a widely held and strong belief that gales are more frequent at the equinoxes, but the observations don’t really support this. According to…
The Colour of Water
The colour of water is determined by: A) What’s under it. B) What’s in it. C) What’s on it. D) And by light levels and…
Spectator Reviews Wild Signs
The Spectator have just reviewed Wild Signs and Star Paths: “It’s a thoughtful, lyrical book about the hidden connections between flora and fauna, the landscape…
The Beast from the East
Cold air from the east is bringing weather mayhem. Or some snow and what we British like to call mayhem. As Bill Bryson once commented,…
Cat’s Paws on Water
When a gust of wind touches the surface of calm water, it creates a localised patch of bigger ripples. These can be seen as a…
Rayleigh Scattering
However clear the sky, however free from even the wispiest of clouds, the sky is never uniformly blue. It is always closer to white near…
Navigating by Windswept Grasses
It was great to be out there on Harting Downs again, in the mist, navigating by the feel of the wind and angles of the…
Red Sun, Sand and Wildfires
As Ophelia ravaged the west coast of Ireland yesterday, the south coast of England was spared the high winds. The storm did suck in smoke…
Newsletter Mini Challenges
I just sent out my latest newsletter (you can subscribe at the bottom), which included the four mini challenges below: Answers at the bottom. 1.…
The Wedge Effect
My thanks to Malcolm Pinches for sending in these great examples of the ‘wedge effect’ from the Isle of Eigg in the Scottish Inner Hebrides.…
Beware the Beech’s Branches
This is a common sight in my local beechwoods. Beech trees have a habit of dropping large branches without much warning. They are not good…
White Out and Prevailing Winds
My thanks to Ginny Howells for coming on a course and for this wonderful email: “I just thought I’d share how I used natural navigation…
A Junction Puddle
I came across a nice example of a ‘junction puddle’ near Lavington Common in Sussex yesterday.
Phototropism and Gravitropism
There is a nice example of gravitropism and phototropism in action in this picture. Gravitropism – The orientation of a plant or other organism in…
BBC Winter Wonderland
I did a short piece for BBC Inside Out that was broadcast on Monday evening. It can be viewed via this link (within the UK,…
Snow and Gorse
It is that time of year when we get to enjoy snow and ice natural navigation clues. In the south of England there hasn’t been…
Mackerel Sky
Following some bad weather recently, I saw the beautiful ‘mackerel sky’ above. A mackerel sky can be used to forecast weather, but it is at…